This disclosure is based upon French Application No. 99/06849, filed on May 31, 1999 and International Application No. PCT/FR00/01271, filed May 11, 2000, which was published on Dec. 7, 2000 in a language other than English, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
The invention concerns a portable integrated-circuit device having a support body and a detachable minicard of the smart card type with a smaller format compared with the standard format of smart cards. It also relates to a method for manufacturing the said device.
It will be recalled that integrated-circuit cards with flush contacts make it possible for example to perform secure transactions of the electronic money, identification or telecommunication type. The dimensions of the cards and the positioning of the contacts are defined by a standard corresponding to the international standards ISO 7810, 7816-1 and 7816-2.
This first standard defines a card with or without contact as a thin portable element with the dimensions: 85 mm long, 54 mm wide and 0.76 mm thick.
A second standard has defined the format of smart cards dedicated to the mobile telephony market.
Smart cards dedicated to telephony have a smaller format compared with the ISO format which has just been given. These are minicards, known as SIM cards, 25 mm long and 15 mm wide, the thickness being identical to the thickness of the cards complying with the first standard.
It should be stated that an integrated-circuit card with contact has a PVC or ABS plastic device according to the standard format. This device carries at least one electronic microcircuit (also referred to as an electronic module or electronic micromodule in the literature) and a series of contact areas for the electrical connection of the microcircuit to an operating circuit.
It should also be stated that, according to a known method of manufacturing such a card, the support of the integrated-circuit card is produced by moulding a plastics material or by lamination, and then the microcircuit is incorporated in the card support during a so-called xe2x80x9cinsettingxe2x80x9d operation. In practice, the microcircuit is glued in a cavity provided for this purpose in the support.
It should also be stated that, up to the present time, an integrated-circuit card with contact with a format which is smaller (minicard) compared with the standard format, is produced using the method for manufacturing a standard-format card, which ends with an operation of partial precutting of the card support in order to delimit a region comprising the contacts zone.
It is therefore in this support that the smaller-format card is then produced, producing a slot with a contour which is formed in this support around an internal portion including the microcircuit and the contact areas. This slot delimits the card complying with the second format corresponding to the minicard, which is connected to the standard-format card by tabs which were carefully left during the formation of the contour slot so that the standard-format card serves as a support for the minicard.
The minicard is detached either by cutting a tab by means of a tool, or by causing the rupture of these tabs by pressing on the internal portion by means of a tool or more simply with the finger.
It is only at the end of manufacture of the card that the precutting is carried out, for example by punching or by means of a cutting tool such as a laser beam or a high-pressure water jet.
An example of an embodiment of such a card is for example described in the document EP A-0 521 728.
The mobile telephony market is constantly changing and the trend is towards a maximum miniaturisation of the mobile terminals. Because of this, miniaturisation of the minicard format seems to be a necessity in order not to be detrimental to the miniaturisation of the terminals.
The trend is therefore towards a reduction in the format of the cards intended to equip the new generations of mobile telephones while seeking to preserve the size of the integrated circuits and even increasing it.
It is this new generation of portable devices that is involved. This is because the portable devices with minicards as proposed up to the present time consist of the ISO standard format card. This proves to be a technology which is difficult to implement with the new-generation portable devices, which are going to have dimensions which are even smaller than those proposed up to the present time.
The present invention proposes to afford a solution which is more economical since it is better adapted to the very small dimensions of the portable integrated-circuit devices dedicated to the new generations of mobile telephones whilst allowing easy handling of these devices and keeping the advantages of graphical personalisation.
The invention relates to a portable integrated-circuit device having a support body and a detachable minicard carrying the integrated circuit, principally characterised in that the minicard is disposed at one end of the support body.
According to a first embodiment, the minicard is connected to the support body by a breaking line.
According to a second embodiment, the minicard is connected to the support body by an adhesive disposed on one of its principal faces.
According to another characteristic, the support body is in the shape of a tongue.
Advantageously, the tongue is rectangular.
Advantageously, the tongue has a width substantially equal to that of the minicard.
Another object of the invention is a method for manufacturing a portable device with an integrated circuit for which the integrated circuits have previously been attached to a support film including the contact areas and the said integrated circuits have been connected to the corresponding contact areas thus forming micromodules, principally characterised in that it includes the following steps:
placing the support film comprising a plurality of micromodules in an injection mould,
moulding on the said film on the opposite side to the contact areas, by means of a plastics material, so as to form a panel,
cutting the panel so as to obtain support bodies having at one of their ends the minicard formed by the micromodule housed in the plastics material.
According to another characteristic, the method includes a step of precutting the end of the support bodies.
According to one embodiment, the precutting is carried out during the overmoulding operation, the mould having an adapted shape so as to obtain this precutting.
According to another embodiment, the precutting is carried out during the cutting of the support bodies.
In the case where the support film is a dielectric, the material of the dielectric is identical to that of the overmoulded plastic material.